by Jim Eldridge
I thought about what life was like for me and Charlie and the others in the trenches. And about Rob and Jed Lowe and all the other fighting units going over the top and being cut down, and I couldn’t help but feel that Base HQ and the way the generals lived was a long way from what the War was really like. The dirt and the bullets and the blood and the mud. But I didn’t say it out loud.
I also found out that not all the Top Brass agreed with the way the War was being fought. A lot of the generals wanted a quick end to the War and I heard one say to another that the Commander-in-chief ought to go for one all-out attack and finish the Germans off and get it over and done with. Messages came through from London, from the Secretary to the Prime Minister, saying much the same thing. But then I overheard General Plumer, who was the Commander’s right-hand man, say to one of his major generals that the Commander’s view was “to wear down the Hun bit by bit, like a dripping tap”. He added: “It’s not worth throwing our weight against the Hun while he’s still strong. We’ve got to weaken him first before we strike with everything we’ve got.”
When I heard this I thought, “That’s all very well, but back in the trenches we’re throwing everything we’ve got at the Germans already and they seem to be as strong as ever.” But I didn’t say it out loud, I kept my mouth shut.
I’d been at Base HQ for about four days when the Commander-in-chief himself, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, arrived. He’d been on a tour of his commanders at their different positions at the Front to see how the War was going. He came into the Communications Room with General Plumer and immediately Sergeant MacWilliams leapt out of his chair and snapped stiffly to attention, banging the heels of his boots smartly together, saluting as he did so. I followed his lead and leapt to my feet, snatching off my earphones.
I was amazed to find that Haig was much smaller than I’d thought he’d be. I don’t know why I expected him to be tall, but I did. His hair was white, and he had a big moustache. He carried himself absolutely stiff and straight.
“Stand easy, Sergeant,” said Plumer.
Sergeant MacWilliams and I stood easy, and the Sergeant gave me a hard look which meant “Get back to work”, so I sat down, put my earphones back on and turned back to my telegraph key.
“Any messages, Sergeant?” asked Plumer.
“All today’s messages have gone to Brigadier General Davidson, sir!” bellowed the Sergeant.
That was one of the odd things about sergeants, they seemed to shout all the time, even when they were talking to someone just a few feet away.
Haig and Plumer nodded, then turned and walked out of the room. In the whole time Haig hadn’t said one word.
Sergeant MacWilliams turned to me and said: “You are a very privileged man, Stevens. You have just seen one of the greatest men in the world. If we had more men like Field Marshal Haig this war would be over by Christmas.”
The day after Field Marshal Haig arrived a new phrase started to crop up in messages that I sent and received. “Big Push”. At first I hadn’t got the faintest idea what this meant, and I’d learnt that it didn’t do to ask questions. Over the next couple of days, though, I kept my eyes and ears open trying to find out more about it. I soon learnt from the mutterings that went on between generals and brigadiers and other officers, that this Big Push was going to be a major offensive. No one said when it was going to be, or where it was going to be, but a decision had definitely been taken to launch a massive all-out assault.
I was surprised, especially after what I’d heard General Plumer say about “the dripping tap” and that Haig didn’t believe in launching a major offensive until the Germans were already weakened. From the telegraph messages that I was taking the Germans seemed as strong as ever. It occurred to me that maybe the Commander wasn’t the one taking the big decisions. But then, if Field Marshal Haig wasn’t, who was taking the decisions? Was it the politicians back in London? I’d heard rumours that there had been a lot of arguments between Haig and the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, about how this war was being run. A couple of days later I heard solid proof.
I was in the Communications Room, taking down messages that were coming in from stations at the Front, when I heard Field Marshal Haig and General Plumer talking together in the corridor just outside my door. They were talking about the Americans coming into the War. So far, although the Canadians and the New Zealanders and the Australians had come into the War on our side, the Americans had kept out of it and stayed neutral. Charlie and some of the others said this was because there were so many Germans living in America that the Yanks wouldn’t know which side to fight on if they came in.
“The first contingent of Americans have arrived in France,” I heard Plumer’s voice say.
“How many?” came Haig’s question.
“Just a few hundred,” said Plumer.
“A few hundred!” exploded Haig. “What does President Wilson think this is? A tea party that’s got out of control?”
“The Americans say it’s just a token force,” said Plumer. “They say most of their men are in training and they’ll be over here by Christmas.”
“Before Christmas!” snapped Haig. “We need them now, not by Christmas! It’s bad enough that Lloyd George has taken our planes just to make sure he gets votes! Now he won’t ask Wilson to bring his men in earlier! Sometimes I don’t think that fool Lloyd George wants us to win this war!”
Then I heard the heels of their boots ringing as they both marched off along the corridor.
The business of the planes I’d only found out about since I’d been at Base HQ. It seems that the Germans had sent over planes and carried out air raids on Britain. The month before, in June, a bomber had scored a direct hit on an infants’ school and killed all the little kids. The public back home had been up in arms, demanding to know what the Government was doing to protect it from more German air raids. As a result, the War Cabinet had ordered two squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps to be sent back to England to defend it against German bombers. This meant that the numbers of British planes here in Flanders had been cut and all the generals had been livid.
“We’re losing thousands of men a day over here!” I’d heard one general rage to another. “They lose a few kids and we have to send our flying boys back to protect them. Next thing they’ll demand our army goes back to protect them as well!”
Personally, I was glad I was just an ordinary soldier and didn’t have to make decisions about where to send the planes or the troops. It seemed to me that whatever the Top Brass did was wrong. If they refused to send planes back to defend England and bombing raids killed more kids, then they’d be in the wrong. But if they sent the planes back to England and our troops were killed because they didn’t have protection, they’d be wrong again.
August 1917
At the end of three weeks, the bloke I had been filling in for at Base HQ returned from leave. By this time, by keeping my skin dry, my burns had healed enough for me to be classed as fit to return to active service. I still had scars on my arms where the skin had been burnt, but many men had worse souvenirs of this war.
I had mixed feelings about going back to the Front. On the down side, after the safety and luxury of life at Base HQ, including a real bed and proper hot food, I was going back to an uncomfortable cot in a tent on a muddy field. Then back into the real mud of the trenches. But I was really looking forward to getting back together with Charlie and the others. Always having to be on my guard about what I might say while I was at HQ, which mainly meant saying nothing at all, had been wearing me down. I never felt relaxed the whole time I was there. It sounds ridiculous that I could feel more relaxed back at the Front, with bombs falling and the Hun firing at us, and the mud and the mess, but I did. And that was because I didn’t feel relaxed surrounded by generals and brigadiers, but I did when I was with my own mates.
I managed to squeeze on to one of the transit buses taking the new influx of troops to Poperinghe, and got back to camp by la
te afternoon.
Charlie was in our tent playing cards with Ginger and Wally as I came in. They all let out a cheer as I walked in.
“Here comes the General!” chuckled Charlie. “Fresh from HQ. Give us a word, General. What are your orders for us ordinary soldiers!”
“You can poke your head in a mud-hole!” I responded with a grin.
The others laughed, and then all started asking questions at once, eager to find out what life was like at Base HQ. Did the generals really eat their food off silver plates? Did they have servants? Was it true they could actually telephone their families back home whenever they wanted? And could they go off on leave every few weeks?
“Later, later!” I protested. “Don’t forget, I’m a man who’s suffered. I’ve been forced to eat hot food and lay in a bed with a comfortable pillow and clean cotton sheets. And I’ve had to have hot baths and wear clean clothes.”
Ginger laughed and picked up his pillow, a wet mass of straw, and threw it at me.
I looked round the tent. “Where are Danny and Alf?” I asked. “On leave?”
A silence fell, and then Ginger said awkwardly, “They were both killed.”
“How?” I asked weakly.
“Blown to smithereens,” said Ginger soberly. “Shrapnel killed Alf. No one knew where Danny was at first, there was so little left of him. He must’ve taken the whole force of the blast. The people who were first on the scene thought he might have been buried under the mud. Then they found bits all over the place. One of them was Danny’s hand. They only knew it was his because of his ring.”
I sat there stunned. Alf and Danny killed. One minute alive, the next second … dead.
We’d all seen men killed and all felt bad for them, but when it happened to someone I’d spent time with, worked with, had fun with, it hit me hard.
As well as Danny and Alf, I discovered that another six of the original dozen Engineers had been killed in the last few weeks. Me, Charlie, Ginger and Wally were the only ones left.
“They’re bringing out new boys to replace them,” said Wally. “They should be here the day after tomorrow. Till then, it’s up to us to keep the communications of this war up and running.”
I’d been so looking forward to getting back together with my old mates, and now I found two of my closest pals had been killed. I couldn’t help but think about Rob. Was he still alive?
The next day me, Charlie, Wally and Ginger returned to the trenches. Because our battalion had been so reduced in numbers we were attached to another unit of Royal Engineers. Two new lads were put with us to make up our unit of six: Terry Crow and Peter Parks. They were both from London, both in their early twenties, fresh out from training. Like all of us, they were trained-up telegraph operators.
In the trenches there was definitely a feeling that something big was about to happen. We could all tell that something was up. For one thing, there seemed to be more soldiers than before. Also, more trenches seemed to have sprung up in the time I’d been away, and they had been dug much nearer to the German lines. All those messages I’d taken and sent while I was at Base HQ, and all those conversations I’d overhead about the “Big Push”, started to fall into place. Our Top Brass needed to get on and do something big to win this war, and soon.
Each time Charlie and I went out to repair cables or lay new ones, we were being sent further and further into No Man’s Land, the patch of open ground between our front line and the German front line. We were putting more and more cables and telegraph points in the forward trenches, and more and more troops were being moved into them. Seven days passed, then two weeks, and we were still in the trenches, still working.
Then it started to rain. We’d been living with a steady drizzle for some time now, but this was different. This was heavy rain which made the mud we were in even more of a quagmire. Walking through it was like trying to walk through thick glue.
All the time the Germans were pounding at our trenches with their heavy artillery, as if they also knew that something big was about to take place and were doing their best to stop it happening.
At night the Germans sent up flares to light up No Man’s Land so they could show up any surprise attack that might be launched. Charlie and I and the other Engineers sat in our dugout in the reserve trench and watched the night sky light up as each new flare went up from the German lines.
And all the time it kept on raining.
September 1917
One afternoon, just after the middle of September, even more troops filed along the reserve trench, heading for the Front. Charlie and I were in the trench at the time, trying to dig a reel of cable out of a shell-hole. As they passed I recognized one of them. It was my old friend, Jed Lowe from the Lonsdales.
I hailed him, and then looked further along the line of men, and sure enough I picked out the figure of Rob.
“Rob!” I called. He saw me, and stopped and shook my hand.
“Billy,” he said. But this time I noticed there was no twinkle in his eyes, no smile on his face. His eyes looked deeper set in his face. He looked so much older than when I had last seen him, even though it had only been two months before.
I jerked my head towards the German lines.
“Looks like this could be it, at last,” I said. “The final push.”
“I hope so,” he said. “Unless the rain stops it.”
“Rain stops play,” I said, and he almost smiled.
I looked along the line at the soldiers with Rob, and noticed that on many of them their badges and flashes were all different.
“The Lonsdales changed their badges?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation positive.
Rob grinned wryly. “Not many of us Lonsdales left now, Billy,” he said. “I reckon just me and Jed Lowe and half a dozen others are all that’s left. We’re a combined battalion now. A mixture of us, added with some of the survivors from the Sussex, Middlesex and Hereford Regiments. We call ourselves the Allsorts.”
“And how are things in the new unit?” I asked.
Rob shot a quick glance ahead, and then said quietly but angrily: “The men are great, but the new officers who’ve been sent out are awful. We’re told what to do by idiots who don’t know the first thing about it. They come out here as officers just because their dad owns a factory or something, and they haven’t got a clue about how to mount an attack. We’ve lost more men because of the stupidity of some of our junior officers than because of German bullets.”
“No talking along there!” barked a voice from ahead.
I looked towards the voice and saw a young man who could only have been about twenty himself with a small moustache doing its best to sprout from under his nose.
“Come on, men!” he snapped.
Rob rolled his eyes to show what he thought of his new officer. Then he and the bedraggled troops, with what few remained of the Lonsdale Battalion, trudged forward splish-splashing through the mud. As I watched him go my heart felt heavy. The Rob Matthews who was walking away from me wasn’t the Rob I’d known all my life, a happy, positive, optimistic boy. Instead he was an angry and disillusioned young man.
That night, me, Charlie, Wally, Ginger, Terry and Peter tried to get some shut-eye in our dugout cave in our reserve trench. As always, we took turns to keep watch, just in case something happened that meant we had to swing into action. Usually we drew straws to see who took first watch, the one who drew the shortest straw taking it, but this time I volunteered. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, anyway, my mind was full of what was about to happen. The Big Push that was coming. I thought of Rob and Jed and the remaining Lonsdales, waiting in the front-line trenches for the order to go over the top. They’d be getting their rum ration about now. The men in the front lines, the fighting units, were given a tot of rum each to “warm them up” just before the whistles went and they scaled the ladders and then ran forward to attack the enemy.
At 0200 I woke Wally and he took over on watch, and I crawled on to my bed
and tried to get some sleep. I really didn’t think I’d be able to sleep with all the thoughts that were in my head, but I suppose the tiredness got to me, because the next thing I remember was Charlie shaking me. It was 0430 hours.
“Time to get up,” he said. “They’re getting ready.”
I scrambled out of our dugout and into the reserve trench. In the darkness I could hear the sounds of activity from the forward trenches: scaling ladders being put into place against the walls; the clicking of rifles being made ready.
“Not long now,” said Ginger.
At 0540 our big guns opened up. The ground around us shook and I thought the trench might come down on top of us, despite all the timber holding it up. Even from our trench we saw that over the German lines the sky seemed to be on fire as shell after shell landed on the German positions and blew up.
As well as the heavy guns lobbing shells at the German lines, there was the chatter chatter chatter of our machine-guns opening up, pouring a stream of deadly lead towards the German Front. Then suddenly the machine-guns went quiet and there were the sounds of whistles from ahead of us, and the roar of men’s voices as the Infantry went over the top of the trenches and hurled themselves at the German lines. As I huddled in the dugout I thought of Rob and Jed and the rest of the remaining Lonsdales out there in the mud and the infernal noise of No Man’s Land, with the Germans firing at them.
The sounds of battle went on for what seemed like hours. Only at daybreak did the noise begin to die down. We waited in the dugout until noon, wondering what had happened. Had the attack succeeded? Were the Germans in retreat? Then Lieutenant Jackson appeared in the opening of the dugout.
“Right, men,” he announced. “The attack has moved our position forward. This is where we come in. We have to run cables into what were the German bunkers so that we can keep our forward communication lines open, and we have to do it today, not tomorrow.”